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Niccolo Machiavelli writes in The Prince that “in the beginning the disease is easy to cure but hard to diagnose; with the passage of time, having gone unrecognized and unmedicated, it becomes easy to diagnose but hard to cure.” In this context, let’s look at three events: last year’s Toronto G20 riot, the recent death of a York police officer, and the fate of the young driver who caused the officer’s tragic death.

Despite efforts most of us made not to generalize, for months the police forces looked like a bunch of thugs for depriving citizens of their civil rights — then one of them died, and now we think of them all as heroes. At the same time, our young people, usually pampered in our understanding and tolerant society, were suddenly seen as potential criminals.

This happens, as Machiavelli wrote, because we don’t deal with an issue before it becomes a problem, but only after. At that point, we are not looking for justice or a solution to the problem. We just want to flush out our frustration and appease our guilty consciences.

Police are neither thugs nor heroes. They’re just people doing their jobs. As in many other fields, among many good police there are bad ones. The same is true of our youth. Most not potential criminals, just individuals trying to understand what is going on around them and, at times, confused and without any meaningful guidelines to determine right from wrong.

To deal properly with policing issues, we need to talk about them during times of normalcy, not after a riot or when a police officer is killed. Likewise, we need to discipline our children during our day-to-day relationships, not when they kill a police officer.

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If we did that, we’d realize that police are doing their jobs and, at times, risking their lives to protect ours. They should be praised for their daily work and, when there are problems, they should be faced and solved during normal times, rather than waiting for a crisis like the G20 riot. For example, I don’t like the arrogant attitude many police display in dealing with day-to-day business. They confuse being authoritative with being authoritarian. Rudeness doesn’t make you tough. It’s a sign of weakness.

It’s not illegal, of course, but the attitude can easily degenerate into the one we witnessed during the G20 riots if no one takes care of the issue before it becomes a problem and our police force becomes a disgrace — until one of them is killed and they all become heroes. A bit of balance would be less newsy but definitely fairer.

Then we have the issue of our young generation. They are considered victims of our society, often left alone by their own parents and dumped into a school system that is more and more confused about its role. As victims, they are always right — they cannot be disciplined by their teachers, who are afraid even to raise their voice fearing repercussions. Bad marks are seen by many as a tool of humiliation and an expression of injustice toward “those less fortunate.”

Many parents ignore their children for reasons that are not always justifiable, but those same children can do no wrong at school where teachers, or the almighty system, are always to blame for whatever they do wrong. Basically, we don’t have the time or expertise to educate our children and, in order to appease our consciences, we justify whatever they do — until they steal the car from their parents and kill a police officer. At that point, the young victim becomes a criminal and the “thug” police officer becomes a hero.

Then, after a few weeks, everything goes back to normal, with all of us rightly lamenting the tragic fate of a young guy lying paralyzed in hospital; with the police criminalizing every teenager driving a car and displaying their authoritarian attitude to everyone in sight; every student becoming a victim of our society, untouchable and isolated from any kind of discipline . . . until there is another riot or another police officer killed. And we start all over again. How to break this cycle? We should act during times of normalcy, not react to tragedies.

Angelo Persichilli is a political analyst whose column appears Sunday.

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